Slow data transfer to USB External Drive - Help

I'm running the WD MyBook Essential 160GB via 2.0 on an iMac FlatPanel 1GHz running OSX 10.4.7.
Questions:
1. I want to both (a) back-up my 80GB HD for on a regular basis in case of emergencies and also off-load media files (Mainly movies/photos) I may want to access later but don't want on my internal drive taking up space. Is there any recommended software that will do both? Do I need to partition the external drive to do this, i.e. one side for the back-up and one side for media file storage?
2. I stupidly bought the USB2.0 version of MyBook when I should have got the FW. Is there a way to make transfers faster? The transfer rate is unbelievably slow. Is there any reason that transfer of 10G would take almost all night?
Thanks for any help.

Assuming the internal drive of your USB case is Parallel IDE/ATA, this is all you need at $46 + shipping:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/MacAlly/PHR100AF/
If it is SATA, this is what you'd need, at $60 + shipping:
http://www.cooldrives.com/combo-sata-drive-enclosure-firewire-and-usb.html
To tell the difference between SATA and Parallel IDE see these images of the back of the hard drive which I got off the Newegg store website for SATA (images are reduced for typical web browser page size, but still show the importance of the difference between the ports): and Parallel IDE .
I might add some SATA hard drives have the 4 pin power connector you see on the right of Parallel IDE drives in addition to the standard SATA power connector. Don't let this confuse you.

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JPEG Corruption post transfer over USB External Drive (usb2.0)

Hello
I have two external drives, both support firewire400/800 and USB2.
On the firewire 400 settings no issue at all.
Previously on PPC powerbook, I used firewire 800 and no issues at all.
While waiting for my expresscard34-firewire800 to arrive this week, I am using the USB2 port on the macbook pro to trasnfer a jpeg library (c24gb) to and from, using either the internal 7200rpm sata drive on the machine, or also from the connected firewire 400 lacie 1tb bigger disc.
Whichever solution I use to copy from, all JPEG's that go via the USB2 port on the macbook, any usb2.0 port, get corrupted. I can open in aperture/bridge, or even testing in vista beta or xp and the files are corrupt. But if I transfer via the firewire 400, all is fine.
I can switch around the external drives, I have deleted all partitions and reformatted, and even gone through both fat32/osx-journaled options to no avail. Weird or what?
My only thinking option here is to create a .dmg 24gb file of the whole folder, and move that across, but that is just daft.
P.s. transferring any other type of data works perfectly fine, e.g. .mp3/.doc.xls etc.
Any thoughts on this weird one.
thks in advance!
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Hello,
The iMac G4 17" 1GHz only has USB1.1 so it doesn't matter that the MyBook is USB2.0 you'll only transfer at USB1.1 speeds (1.5MBps). As there is no way to add USB2.0 to the iMac G4 ≤1GHz you need to look at a Firewire drive like the MyBook Pro/Premium; incidentally, both of these come with back-up software too.
The iMac G4 can't boot from USB so if your internal drive fails you can't boot the iMac like you could on a Firewire drive.
Personally I do have my MyBook Pro partitioned in to a back-up space which matches my internal hard drive and a separate media file partition.
BTW you have posted in the Intel iMac forum. The users here will be less familiar with the specific issues that iMac (Flat Panel)s may suffer. I'd advise that you post future queries in the iMac G4 forum:
G4 (aka Flat Panel): Intel:
Click image to go to correct forum
regards
mrtotes

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Hello,
I have been using time machine to backup to a 500 gig Internal hard drive. Now I want to use that Hard drive for a Windows partition. To that end, I recently purchased a Buffalo 2-500 gigs external hard drive. Now how do I transfer the full data from the internal time machine'd hard drive to the external, and continue to use the external hard drives for time machine? Also, should I somehow "link" the two externals to backup across both when one gets full?
Message was edited by: HandbellRingr
Message was edited by: HandbellRingr

HandbellRingr,
I'm going to add some clarification to V.K.'s excellent instructions...
Before attempting to "restore" your TM backup volume to another drive, use Disk Utility to create a new partition map on the new drive:
First, eject and disconnect your Time Machine backup drive, then connect and mount the new drive. In Disk Utility, select the new drive (the drive, not the named volume that will appear indented below the drive) in the list on the left, and switch to the "Erase" tab. Choose "Mac OS Extended (journaled)" from the pull-down menu, then click "Erase." Provided you have the drive selected when you do this, it will write a new partition map, compatible with OS X and Time Machine, on the new drive, thus insuring that you don't run into problems when restoring.
Once you have erased the drive, switch to the "Restore" pane. Turn off Time Machine, then connect your Time Machine backup drive. When it mounts and shows up in Disk Utility, drag the named volume on which your Time Machine backup is stored from the list on the left to the "Source" field in the body of the Disk Utility window (do not attempt to drag it from the Finder into the window). Next, drag the named volume on your new external drive from the list on the left into the "Destination" field. Check the box labeled "Erase destination," then click "Restore." It'll take a while.
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Hi
Ive got a Macbook Pro and Mac Pro. In order to access large files from both I got a 2TB drive connected to my Airport Extreme and it shows up fine in both Macs under SHARED.
When I copy files from and to that harddrive from my Macbook Pro its impressively fast. Seems as fast as a USB stick.
However when I try to do the same with my Mac Pro its extremely slow. A 1GB file takes about 15 minutes.
Are there any settings that I might have overlooked on the Mac Pro?
Thanks
Jorg

This won't be of any help for you , but I happen to have the exact same problem. My AEBs is linked to a LaCie external HD, my wireless network include a macmini aluminum, a Macbook Air, a MacBook Pro, a MacPro Dual-COre Intel 2.66 GHz. . Everything works fine expect for the MacPro which is painfully slow to get data to and from. The MacPro Airport Card is of the Airport Extreme type (0x14E4, 0x87), like my other macs…
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Slow data transfer to/from USB Jump Dive

I am experiencing extremely slow transfer speeds using a PNY USB Jump Drive on my 2.4Ghz Intel iMac with 4G RAM running Leopard 10.5.8. Same problem no matter what port is used for the connection. This same Jump Drive is blazing fast on my other G4 Macs running Tiger. Any thoughts? Thanks!

Have you tried reformatting it on the newer iMac? Try using the Erase tab in Disk Utility to erase (reformat) it. See if that makes a difference.
Note: Although it should not affect the access speed, the native +partition map scheme+ for PowerPC Macs is +Apple Partition Map+. For Intel Macs, it is +GUID Partition Table+. If that flash drive is formatted for Windows, it may use +Master Boot Record+ with FAT32 formatting. You can see what it uses currently by looking at the bottom of the Disk Utility window with the flash drive highlighted in the sidebar. Such factors may have an impact on access speeds.
Also, if you have a regular USB external drive and try it on both Macs, do you notice any similar difference in access speeds.

USB external drive not readable by mac but readable by windows

Hi, I have a usb external drive (Seagate FreeAgentDesktop Media) which works fine with windows xp but cannot be read by the mac. I reinstalled the mac a couple of days ago because it was being very slow and I had a bunch of junk on it. Anyway, after that, it won't read the external drive. It will give me an error message saying that the disk is not readable by the computer. Sometimes it will give me the message saying that the drive was unmounted improperly by windows and for me to unmount it correctly. When I go back to windows, it's there, then I restart and go back to mac, it'll give me the message that the disk is not readable. I have 2 of these drives and both of them have this issue. I also tried disk warrior but it says that the file system cannot be rebuilt. I tried USB flashdrives and they work. I got all the data off of one of the external drives into the other and I couldn't format or even erase the drive because it says that the permission was denied. However, I could format it and erase it with the installation DVD. But I had the same result no matter what format they were in. I have very important data on these drives and I really need to be able to use them with both operating systems. Thanks a lot!

Hi Schmerz Meister;
If DiskWarrior say it can rebuild the disk about your only other alternative it to reformat it.
This will of course destroy all data on the disk so make sure you have copies of the data elsewhere,
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Really hope someone can help me with this.
I've got a late 2011 Macbook Pro, and was running Time Machine on a 500GB GDrive USB external drive. Was working fine when I last attached it on Feb 29. The Time Machine backup was encrypted.
When I tried to use it yesterday, as I have lost all my iTunes data on another drive, I got a Kernel Panic when I entered the password for the drive.
I managed to de-encrypt the drive using Disk Utility, but now I get a Kernel Panic everytime I plug the **** drive in.
I really need this backup data, would appreciate any help people can offer. Am running Lion 7.3, and the same error occurs on a Lion iMac that I have tried the drive on.

Really hope someone can help me with this.
I've got a late 2011 Macbook Pro, and was running Time Machine on a 500GB GDrive USB external drive. Was working fine when I last attached it on Feb 29. The Time Machine backup was encrypted.
When I tried to use it yesterday, as I have lost all my iTunes data on another drive, I got a Kernel Panic when I entered the password for the drive.
I managed to de-encrypt the drive using Disk Utility, but now I get a Kernel Panic everytime I plug the **** drive in.
I really need this backup data, would appreciate any help people can offer. Am running Lion 7.3, and the same error occurs on a Lion iMac that I have tried the drive on.

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I have the oldest macbook (1.83. 2 gigs ram, 60 gig internal hard drive)
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I am having a problem mapping my USB external drive in my PC running WIndows Vista. Here is what I have so far:
USB External Drive connected to my AirPort Extreme which is connected to my Century Link modem/router.
I have installed the USB drive using the Airport Utility. In the Disks section the Enable File Sharing is checked, Secure Shared Disks is set to With a Disk Password, I have entered the password in the next 2 rows, and finally AirPort Disks Gues Access is set to Not Allowed. The section below named These Settings Configure Windows File Sharing is empty. Am I supposed to put something here?
I was also told I need to map the drive in my PC, but when I go to do that via the Computer and the Map Network Drive, I get stuck where it asks me to enter a folder name. I read many of the posts which tell me I need to enter among other things the disk's ip address, but I am unable to find it anywhere. Where do I find what to put here?
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I had my USB drive on my APE working with Time Machine under 10.5.1 very reliably. A few days ago however, I needed to suspend a backup operation, and when I came back to restart it, time machine refused to mount the disk image on the drive. After several attempts to get it to connect with no luck I decided to delete the image (the sparce image file) and start over. Now TM refuses to create a new image.
BTW, on the Mac OSX hints site there have been suggestions to start a backup with the drive directly connected, then stop the backup, move the sparce image file to the root of the drive, reconnect the drive to the APE base station to get it working. I tried this again, but I think Apple has changed something in 10.5.2, because when directly connected TM no longer creates a sparce image file.
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WD Essential 500GB USB External Drive Not Recognized

I have a WD USB External Drive which was formatted for use with my old windows based PC. Bought iMac G5 and at first recognized but now does not and when i run disk verify in dissk utility get following error message:
Verifying volume “My Book”
** /dev/disk1s1
** Phase 1 - Read FAT
** Phase 2 - Check Cluster Chains
** Phase 3 - Checking Directories
Unable to read directory (Input/output error)
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 non HFS volume checked
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Get same message when I try to repair, any help will be greatly appreciated

Hello! I would try hooking it back up to a pc and run the repair function from there or erase the drive as Mac format and start all over. Tom

USB External Drive Backup & Erase Woes

I have been using a Lacie 500GB USB external drive allocated as a backup disk for time machine. Over the last couple of weeks, the disk has been spontaneously ejecting itself from the desktop. This could happen when not backing up to time machine, or during the backup.
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Today, I decided to erase the time machine disk, zero the data, and re-allocate the drive for time machine backup. After setting these preferences in disk utility, and clicking 'erase', the disk again erased itself, with the error message :
'Disk erase failed with the error: Assert: internal error, or unimplemented'
I then had an external disk which was not present on the desktop, and apparently in some sort of limbo between erased and mounted!
I was able to do a simpler format function on the disk via disk utility, the disk will mount, but the allocated disk space previously used by time machine is still present, and the format has only done that remaining space on the disk.
Anyone know what the above error message refers to, am I able to reformat the disk using the 'zero function', or has the disk failed and become unrecoverable?
Answers / suggestions kindly welcomed.

Welcome to Apple Discussions.
When you use Disk Utility to erase totally you need to click on the LaCie drive name not the name that appears on the desktop. Select how many partitions you want and give each partition the name you want it to have and perhaps also the partitioning scheme and other options that are available, then erase.
Doing this will of course make all that is on the drive unavailable to you.
These are LaCie's directions for their drives.
Some LaCie drives might also have firmware updates available - worth a check on their website.
Note that LaCie seem to have 2 yr warranty on their drives, at least the one I looked at on their website. If the drive is younger than this you might have a warranty claim.

MacBook Air USB external drive power source

I have a LaCie 250GB USB external drive on my MacBook Air and the computer is not being able to power the drive without me connecting the hard drive to an external power source. when the drive was had about 80GB of data it would do it, now that the drive has about 180GB of data, it does not work. Can anybody recommend a solution or an external drive that can hold at least 250GB that can be powered by the MacBook Air without need for external power source?

I have the same time of problem. Although, it's mentioned a using a self powered hub. However, I find this did not work. Apple states that the single usb port on the MBA is high powered to give the ext. super drive they sell the power it needs to connect to the MBA. What I have noticed is no matter which USB self powered hub I use I get the same results. The MBA reports that one or more devices is drawing too much power. Although, the powered hub is supposed to provide power to those devices that require power over USB. I should also mention, all I am connecting are two USB devices. 1 ext. Verbatim 500 Gig Drive. and my iPhone. Since the MBA has only 120 gig drive I had to move all of my movies etc. to the Ext. 500 now if I want to sync my phone or move a movie to the phone I get the errors.

Usb external drives not showing up in lion

My USB external drives are NOT showing up in finder or my disk utlity.
But they are showing up in my System Information!?
In addition, they both work fine on my other laptop.
I can I troubleshoot this on my mac?
Relevant Info:
Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5
MacBook Pro
USB Kindle Updated OS
USB External Drive

I reset my PRAM and it works now. I've no idea what that did...
Thanks for the help.
MC

USB External Drive Trouble

Back in April, I hooked a 500 GB USB external drive to my iMac in order to run time machine. All worked fine until October 17. Yesterday Time Machine popped up with a message telling me it had not backed up in 10 days and I should figure this out. At this point, I noticed that the external drive was no longer mounted on the desktop, although I could see it in Disk Utility. The POSIX error came up. After a long search on the forum and fighting with a PC in the house, I was able to reformat the drive and let Time Machine do its thing.
The initial backup went great and it seemed to back up every hour until 12 am or so it says. Once again, I came down this am and the drive is not mounted and not showing in Disk Utility. I turned it off and on again and now the computer tells me it needs to be initialized.
What in the world is going on? Is it related to USB control and SL? Is it a Time Machine issue? Should I reformat the drive and see if I can simply copy files to the drive and see if it stays mounted that way?
I do not know how to tell an external drive when to unmount or if it should upon the computer going to sleep.
Any help would be greatly appreciated before I spend more money on a new drive.
Debbioe

Thanks, that one's not on my suspect list... yet
Good luck with the replacement, I'm sure it will be fine. When you get it remember to format for Mac OS X.
1. Launch Disk Utility
2. Click the "Erase" tab
3. Select your entire external drive on the sidebar (the uppermost icon).
4. Format: "Mac OS Extended Journaled"
5. Name the Disk (Time Machine, or whatever) only the name of the volume will show in Finder.
-mj

HD clone on USB external drive - what to do?

Greetings-
My Seagate Go USB external drive has a Carbon Copy Clone image. I purchased the Seagate before learning that only fire wire externals provide bootable clones. The Seagate appears fine as a backup. I am trying to figure out what I'm going to do should the internal HD crash. My eMac was upgraded to 4.11 by a Mac shop but they did not give me system disks - my only copy of 4.11 is in the internal HD.
Is it possible to create some kind of start up disk that would allow me to start the Mac (with a bad HD) and then operate the Mac normally using the Seagate clone? Can the OS be copied from the internal HD onto a DVD and could this then be used as a start up disk?
If no, are there any other options? If no, can you suggest an economical fire wire external drive (125-250GB)?
Thanks in advance,
Rich
Huntington Beach, CA

Hi Rich, Firewire is your best option, there is CloneX that allows you to make a bootable CD/DVD of your drive...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/clonex.html
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http://eshop.macsales.com/search/firewire+drives

Slow data transfer to USB External Drive - Help

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